Stable Strategies for Personal Development

In her short story “Stable Strategies for Middle Management,” Eileen Gunn imagines a future in which Margaret, an office worker, seeks radical genetic enhancements intended to help her secure the middle-management job she wants. One source of the story’s tension and dark humor is dramatic irony: readers can see that the enhancements Margaret buys stand little chance of making her life go better for her; enhancing is, for Margaret, probably a prudential mistake. This paper argues that our positions in the real world are sufficiently similar to Margaret’s position in Gunn’s fictional world that we should take this story seriously as grounding an argument from analogy for the conclusion that radical genetic enhancements are, for us, probably a prudential mistake. The paper then defends this method. When the question at hand is one of speculative ethics, there is no method better fit to the purpose than argument from analogy to speculative fiction.     

单克隆抗体的治病与“致病”

对单克隆抗体在病毒性疾病治疗和引起病毒感染增强两方面的作用进行了综述，分析了各自涉及的机理。指出于者是矛盾的统一体，辨证地看待是前提，深入研究是关键，合理和才是目标。     

和谐动机与整合性谈判结果*

人们追求人际和谐的动机具有双重性,一方面是为了促进和谐,另一方面是为了避免破裂,两种动机驱使人们在面对冲突时采取不一样的应对策略。那么,谈判作为一种与冲突密不可分的情境,谈判者的和谐的动机将会对他们的谈判结果产生什么影响呢？本研究整合和谐动机和谈判两方面的文献,探讨了在整合性谈判中两种不同的和谐动机与谈判者的行为以及谈判结果之间的关系。研究结果表明,1)在个体层面上,谈判者的促进和谐动机与其个体收益以及对谈判双方关系的评价正相关,而避免破裂动机与其个体收益以及对谈判双方关系的评价负相关；2)在谈判对子层面上,谈判双方总体的促进和谐与谈判双方的联合收益正相关。本研究不仅进一步论证了和谐动机的概念效度,而且从理论上论证了和谐动机与谈判的关系,对于谈判者具有实践意义。     

How pills undermine skills: Moralization of cognitive enhancement and causal selection

Despite the promise to boost human potential and wellbeing, enhancement drugs face recurring ethical scrutiny. The present studies examined attitudes toward cognitive enhancement in order to learn more about these ethical concerns, who has them, and the circumstances in which they arise. Fairness-based concerns underlay opposition to competitive use—even though enhancement drugs were described as legal, accessible and affordable. Moral values also influenced how subsequent rewards were causally explained: Opposition to competitive use reduced the causal contribution of the enhanced winner’s skill, particularly among fairness-minded individuals. In a follow-up study, we asked: Would the normalization of enhancement practices alleviate concerns about their unfairness? Indeed, proliferation of competitive cognitive enhancement eradicated fairness-based concerns, and boosted the perceived causal role of the winner’s skill. In contrast, purity-based concerns emerged in both recreational and competitive contexts, and were not assuaged by normalization.